Founder of Human Capital Africa (HCA), Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, has called on African governments to prioritise foundational learning, expand girls’ access to secondary education and enforce laws prohibiting child marriage to protect girls across the continent.

Ezekwesili made the call in a statement issued to journalists yesterday in Abuja to mark the International Day of the Girl Child, stressing that education remains one of the most effective ways to protect girls from early marriage and enable them to realise their full potential.

She urged governments to address the link between poor learning outcomes, school dropout rates and child marriage, noting that girls who fail to acquire basic literacy skills are more likely to fall behind academically and eventually leave school.

According to her, UNICEF’s 2026 estimates indicate that approximately one in five girls worldwide is married before the age of 18, affecting about 650 million women and girls alive today.

She added that more than 12 million girls are married annually, while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence of child marriage globally, at 31 per cent.

In Nigeria, Ezekwesili said 23.6 million women and girls were married before the age of 18, representing the highest number in West and Central Africa.

She cited the situation in Jigawa State, where 78 per cent of women aged 20 to 49 were reportedly first married before turning 18, while 63 per cent of women left school to marry.

Ezekwesili warned that child marriage has far-reaching consequences beyond the affected girls, undermining national productivity, public health and economic development.

Citing a report by Columbia University on accelerating efforts to end child marriage, she said an analysis by the Centre for Global Development estimated that the practice could cost the global economy up to $175 billion annually, with cumulative losses approaching $2.5 trillion by 2040.

She also cautioned that reductions in foreign aid, weakening international commitment to women’s rights and rising conflicts could undermine progress towards ending child marriage.

“Child marriage is not a side issue in development. It drains a nation’s human capital directly,” she said.

Despite the challenges, Ezekwesili noted that an estimated 68 million child marriages had been averted globally over the past 25 years through interventions such as girls’ education, legal reforms and social protection programmes.

She cited evidence indicating that each additional year of secondary education reduces a girl’s likelihood of marrying before the age of 18 by five percentage points or more.

She also referenced Niger, where the removal of direct middle-school costs for rural girls was associated with a 19-percentage-point reduction in the probability of marriage for each additional year of secondary education.

According to her, ensuring that every African girl completes secondary education could bring child marriage close to elimination.

However, she stressed that access to schooling alone was insufficient without measurable learning outcomes.

Ezekwesili said approximately 89 per cent of children in sub-Saharan Africa experience learning poverty, meaning they cannot read and understand a simple text by the age of 10.

She argued that foundational literacy and numeracy must become central to efforts to protect girls, explaining that children who struggle to read at an early age are more likely to fall behind, drop out of school and become vulnerable to early marriage.

“A girl who learns is a girl who is not a bride,” she said.

The HCA founder called on African governments to adopt five key measures to accelerate efforts to end child marriage.

She urged governments to make foundational learning a child-protection priority by ensuring that every girl can read with comprehension by age 10 and adopting proven teaching approaches such as structured pedagogy and Teaching at the Right Level.

She also called for the removal of financial barriers that prevent girls from progressing to secondary school, particularly school fees, uniform costs and transportation expenses in rural communities.

Other recommendations include enforcing 18 as the minimum legal age of marriage in every state and community, engaging traditional and religious leaders in prevention efforts, increasing domestic funding for education and girls’ protection, and strengthening accountability through regular publication of data on girls’ learning outcomes, school retention and child marriage rates.

Ezekwesili emphasised that African governments must increasingly finance these interventions through domestic budgets and philanthropy as foreign assistance declines.

She further identified the African Union’s Decade of Accelerated Action for the Transformation of Education and Skills Development in Africa (2025–2034) as an opportunity to place girls’ education and school retention at the centre of the continent’s education reforms.

As the Civil Society Representative on the initiative’s Steering Committee, she pledged to advocate for measurable targets that reflect progress in girls’ learning and continued participation in education.

“The Columbia report sets a realistic target: cutting child marriage prevalence from one in five to one in seven within five years,” she said, adding that Africa could contribute significantly to achieving the target if governments prioritised girls’ education.

Ezekwesili, a former Nigerian Minister of Education and former World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region, maintained that protecting girls’ childhoods requires coordinated action by governments, communities and development partners.

“Any girl-child should be a student, not a bride. She should learn, then lead,” she said.